


devoid

by fiveyaaas



Series: when autumn comes [18]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Complicated Relationships, Cunnilingus, Deception, F/M, Guilt, Pseudo-Incest, Sex Work, Smut, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:15:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27066997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiveyaaas/pseuds/fiveyaaas
Summary: She’d be demure and soft and not let her face react when he called her his Vanya.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy/Vanya Hargreeves
Series: when autumn comes [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1941919
Comments: 4
Kudos: 88
Collections: Harcest Fall Festival: Fiveya Kinktober 2020





	devoid

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CarpeDiemForLife](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CarpeDiemForLife/gifts).



> This is for CarpeDiemForLife, who writes my favorite angst for fiveya and also listens to me rant about it. Thank you so much for being my friend, even if we’ve only been friends for a little bit I’m really thankful for you!!!

Vanya knew Five did not know who she was. She knew this for many reasons, the main one being that the list of instructions were vaguely worded yet entirely overt in that he was requesting  _ her.  _ Well, he was requesting someone entirely like her, she amended. She was different from when he had known her, but she didn’t mind playing the part of a timid, small woman that reminded him of his sister. She’d be demure and soft and not let her face react when he called her his Vanya. 

It was another call girl, one he had hired previously, who found her. Vanya was well-aware the woman was simply searching for money, and she had not been upset, even telling her that if Five recognized who he was touching when he hired her and asked her who was responsible for Vanya receiving this information, she’d let him know. Vanya imagined if she asked politely, he’d pay the woman handsomely. Vanya had known the woman was trying to feed a family, and she was grateful to the woman for giving her the information that would reunite her with Five.

Vanya had been lacking him for very long, but she wanted him to recognize her on his own accord. 

So, she would play the role of herself. Or, at the very least, she would play the role of the Vanya that he knew and loved.

She opted out of the wig, but she did cut bangs for the first time in years. She hoped that would clue him in that she was different, and she wanted him to succeed in recognizing her. If he didn’t, she didn’t know what she would do. 

He had not provided the Umbrella Academy uniform, but it was clear that he had meant for it to be an imitation. If she squinted her eyes, it would be the exact same. There was no insignia and the coloring was just a little off, but it was clear what Five’s goal had been here. 

The woman who had serviced him told Vanya that he never bothered with the same woman twice. She wondered if the idea was that it would always be the first time. If Five was trying to conjure her up out of sheer desperation alone. 

If Vanya was still the timid, little Vanya he had known, she would have never been a call girl. Five was clearly in serious denial. 

She settled against the pillows, sitting on the bed in a way she would have sat to talk about his theories on time travel, knees pulled up, arms wrapped around her legs, her chin rested on her knees, facing the door where he would walk in from. Five had not specified that at all, but, in the case that he didn’t recognize her, at least it would give her a very sizable tip. Perhaps enough to fix the dishwasher in her apartment that had grown a habit of shocking her hands.

Vanya wondered if he had killed someone tonight. She didn’t know how she thought of him being a killer. Supposedly, Five did this on the day off from killing, which had made her snort. Different sins for different days, she guessed. 

The door opened, and she wasn’t acting when she looked up at him and breathed, “Five, you’re here.”

He teleported over to her. He didn’t seem to think anything of her comment. She hadn’t been given a script, but, then again, it was pretty clear Five was looking for a particular person. She got the sense that the other call girls had a sense of intuition, a sort of hivemind that clued all of them in with what each of their clients was searching for. Five wasn’t necessarily subtle in his requests, but for all anyone knew, he was just a guy that wanted to fuck someone he called sister but felt guilty enough to not ask the actual one, not that they had been separated from one another. Regardless, the women he hired were very much professionals, and Vanya had been certain he wouldn’t have hired her if it had not been for the recommendation she came with. He had asked for a picture when he had realized Vanya (or as she had written her name, ‘Penelope’) was not one of the skilled call girls that higher-up Commission workers employed. 

When he had received her picture, he agreed to her, startling her when he had doubled his original offer for how much he would pay her. If anything, this night would keep a roof over her head and her bills paid for a chunk of time.

“Vanya,” he whispered. She took in his older body, wondering how long he had been an assassin for this company to have been at least twenty years older than her. 

She decided to ask him. “When did you become an assassin, brother?”

He made a startled noise, settling in beside her. 

“Does it make you unhappy, Vanya?” 

He was testing her, she realized with a jolt. He wanted her to break character, prove to him that she’s not Vanya. She wondered if he still fucked the ones that didn’t pass his test. 

She threw him a curveball, feeling a sick satisfaction as she drawled, “You’ve killed plenty for Father, anyways.”

He smirked, expression almost chilly, “You’ve done your research, then. About who I am.”

She wanted to bite back  _ ‘if you can call eighteen years of having Reginald scorn me research, then yeah.’ _

She didn’t, just coyly commenting, “You could say that, brother. Would you expect anything less from your confidante?”

He eyed the bare skin between her skirt and her socks before glancing up at her. “I guess I’ll compensate you for the time you spent  _ studying _ for this assignment.”

She felt vaguely annoyed that Five wasn’t following the pseudo-roleplay. If anything, he was failing his test, clearly breaking character. 

She wasn’t about to let him take this from her. 

She crawled on top of him, and he made a startled noise. She went off script, but she could tell that he did not mind at all, and she very subtly ground against his erection, watching his eyes fill with equal parts confusion and arousal. 

_ Timid, little Vanya, her  _ ass. 

She moved her mouth to his ear, “Answer my question, Five. How long have you been an assassin?”

He groaned, “Two years.”

She jerked back, glowering at him. “Where the  _ fuck  _ were you then?”

He looked up, eyes confused, clearly having some serious cognitive dissonance with someone who looked very much like his childhood sweetheart but also looked like someone who wanted very much to take her chances in throttling a trained assassin. 

His cock twitched through his pants against her, meaning that he didn’t mind it one bit.

“I was surviving in an apocalyptic wasteland,” he said, like he had just announced something completely matter-of-fact- like gravity existing or that he was a complete, fucking moron. 

She might throttle him, actually. 

No. No. She couldn’t do that. She  _ wouldn’t.  _ He was clearly lying to what he assumed to be a random call girl about how long he’d been involved in some time-traveling assassination company. He was higher up, she knew. He’d had to have been there for a long time.

He was off killing people while she  _ waited  _ for him. 

She schooled her features up into the innocent mask again, wondering how she managed to not growl when she said, “That had to have been really hard, Five.”

He cleared his throat. “You know how hard I tried to get back home to you? This was how I did it. I joined the Commission to get home to you and the others.”

Vanya bit her lip. He was playing his character now. He was being Five, and she had to be his timid, little Vanya when all she wanted was to call him out for lying, refusing to admit that he was in some killing organization for whatever reason. 

_ He just thinks you’re a random call girl, _ she reminded herself.  _ He’s not going to be honest to you the way he would the actual Vanya.  _

She would play the part of call girl, then. “I’m glad I get to be with you now.”

(She wouldn’t admit, even to herself, that she was not acting when she said those words.)

He smiled softly. They had gone off script. He was supposed to start this by touching her. He had not asked for anything truly brazen as far as the sex went. It would be completely vanilla requests if not for the fact that the women he hired were supposed to fit a very clear description, wear a specific uniform, and call him brother if they did not call him Five. 

She decided she’d help him get back to what he had wanted originally. It would have to be modified, but she figured she could handle it. 

She took his hand, large in her own, and settled it against her thigh, where he had been eyeing her earlier. 

When he whispered, “I’ve always wanted to do this, Vanya,” she felt the first sense of wrongness. He was trying to experience their first time, that’s what he was trying to recreate, how he imagined it. That’s why she wore the uniform. 

And it made sense. Why he was so insistent she be shy in his instructions, why he had them wear wigs if they didn’t match the texture of when she was a kid. 

“Are you in love with her?” 

She had broken character, but they were the most honest words she had said. 

He cleared his throat, looking away. “I am.”

She nodded, digesting this information quickly, forcing herself to be the Vanya he wanted. 

It was hard though. Up until that point, she had been willing to not be herself, but having this knowledge, something she had wanted to know for so long… 

She stayed still and quiet, knowing that would be enough. 

He seemed to understand that she was slipping back into her role, and he gently set her down against the bed. 

“You look so lovely,” he told her, brushing his hand through her hair. She realized he was being so careful because he’d expected it to be a wig. When he realized it wasn’t, he blinked but didn’t comment. 

“Five?” 

He nodded, waiting patiently for her to continue.

“How many people have you killed?”

She knew that the call girls for Commission agents were told never to bring this up, but she had to know. 

“Does it matter?” 

She supposed it didn’t. She knew he’d kill many more, and that he would leave this encounter never having even known it was her. If Vanya begged him to leave right now, told him who she was- it wouldn’t matter. 

He may want her to act like the Vanya he remembered, but he wasn’t the Five she remembered. 

But when he ran his hand up her thigh, it was easy to forget. 

She closed her eyes, imagining that they were in his bedroom at the Academy. If Five was going to pretend she was someone else, it was only fair Vanya did the same. 

When her eyes were closed, he started speaking. Maybe it was easier when she wasn’t looking at him. “I didn’t want to be this, Vanya. I just want to be with our family again. You understand, right?”

She didn’t. She hadn’t spoken to them in quite a while. 

“I wouldn’t have done this if there were any other options.”

His fingers were inside of her; he had moved the fabric of her panties to the side. She wondered if he would keep the skirt on when he fucked her, jerking her hips against his hand at the thought. 

“I’m going to come back to you guys, I promise,” he told her, running his finger along the hood of her clit. “Coming home to you is all I think about. I don’t  _ enjoy _ the killing, Vanya. I promise I don’t.”

Her eyes were still firmly shut, so when his hand pulled down her underwear, she didn’t realize he had placed his head between her thighs. At the sensation of his tongue inside of her, she yelped. 

He pulled away from her body, and she almost asked him to go back to eating her out before she remembered she was supposed to follow his direction. 

“Open your eyes,” he commanded softly, and she did. 

“You really love me, big brother?” She asked because she needed to hear it again, but she asked this way because she needed him to not hear who was really asking. If Five fucked her and sent her on her merry way, knowing it was her, she would be entirely crushed.

“I do, Vanya,” Five told her, running his index finger along her folds. “I’ve waited for this night for so long.”

Vanya looked directly above him, so she didn’t have to quite meet his eyes as she said something she had imagined saying many times to him when she was younger if he would only just  _ come home.  _ “We could run away together, Five. Father wouldn’t ever have to know.”

She was playing the part, but she was asking something else.  _ You could leave the Commission for me, Five,  _ she thought.  _ We could run away together from all the horror, like we used to promise each other when we were scared kids hiding in one another’s bedrooms. _

Five’s eyes held a pain that made him look even older than he already was. Vanya wanted to touch his cheek, tell him to confide in her again, tell her what would make him so sad. 

“We can’t,” he said hoarsely. 

She wondered if Five was even able to distinguish that Vanya was supposed to be a call girl. She didn’t know if Five was entirely there, and the thought concerned her. It made sense, though. Five wouldn’t have killed so easily if he had been in his entirely right mind. If she tried to speak to him and explain, she wondered, would he even completely understand?

“I love you, Five,” Vanya told him, not knowing how she meant it but knowing that she did mean it. “I love you, and I just want you to come home.”

He cleared his throat, looking down from her eyes. “I don’t think I’ll be able to for a while, V.”

“Can you make tonight special, then?” Vanya asked, finding his gaze despite him trying to hide it, touching his cheek and craning his head towards her own. “Can we have something good for just a little bit? I just want it to hurt less when you do go.”

She knew then, that Five had forgotten she was just a plaything that he had purchased for a night. That in his eyes, this was his Vanya, and that he would take care of her. 

The thing was, even if he was entirely right in thinking it was her, he thought it because he was not clear in his mind. 

When he pressed his mouth to her again, she cried out from the feeling of pleasure and she cried from the feeling of despair. He kept lapping her up, probably not even realizing she was sobbing because he was so far gone. Did he even see her when he looked at her? He’d seemed more aware when he’d first gotten there. Was he just a really good actor until he knew he didn’t have to act anymore? Is that why he had tested her? To know if she would be professional enough to not stop when he was clearly breaking down?

“Five,” she said, sad and urgent and still full of desire. “Five, look at me.”

He listened, saw her eyes were coated in tears, and he moved up to kiss her cheek. “It’s okay, Vanya,” he urged. 

“Five, it’s me,” she said, clutching his arm. “It’s me.”

“I know, Vanya,” he told her, but he obviously didn’t as he moved to kiss her neck. “Waited for you for so long, angel.” 

Vanya was shaking; she could feel her heart pounding like it did with panic attacks. “Five, it’s me,” she repeated, digging her nails into his sleeves. “It’s Vanya.”

His belt hit the floor beside them, and the clang of it made her flinch as she started peeling off the buttons of her shirt. He pulled off his own shirt after his coat, and she tugged off his pants, letting him stare at her pert nipples. “You’re so beautiful, Vanya.”

He  _ did _ keep her skirt on.

She watched him as he rolled on the condom, knowing what she had to do and not knowing how she felt about it. “Five, we need to stop for just a second.”

Five pulled away instantly. “Did I do something wrong?”

She touched his shoulder, softly so as not to startle him, “Can you not tell, Five?”

“Tell what?”

She closed her eyes. She wouldn’t have him again ever. She might as well let him have this comfort.

At least she would know he was alive. 

“Lay back,” she commanded, sitting down on top of his thighs as he followed her order. He watched her face, clearly confused why she was the one taking charge, but he wasn’t arguing with her. 

She took his wrist, running her thumb over the tattoo before she guided his erection to her entrance. “Promise me you’ll be safe,” Vanya told him as she sank down onto him, moaning at the feeling of fullness. “That when I leave after this, you’ll at the very least keep yourself safe, okay?”

He nodded. 

“Say it,” Vanya hissed, jerking her hips to emphasize her words. “Promise me you’re going to take care of yourself, Five.”

“I promise, Vanya.” 

Contented, she decided she would at least  _ try  _ to let him comprehend, laying all of her cards on the table before her. She didn’t think he would understand, and she didn’t know if it would change anything even if he did. 

She told him something only he could possibly know. “We were twelve years old,” she said, closing her eyes. “The first time we kissed. There was a blackout, and you said the cameras would have flipped off, and we shared our first kiss in a coat closet because we were afraid Father would catch us if we didn’t hide.” 

“Vanya,” Five’s voice had changed completely, and he spoke more clearly than he had the entire time. He wasn’t completely far gone, then, and he understood who this was. “Vanya, look at me.”

She knew she was crying when she opened her eyes. He looked too stunned to have any tears form. 

“Vanya,” he repeated, louder. Without conscious thought, she ground against him again. At the movement, his eyes cleared, and he flipped them over. They kept eye contact as he rutted into her.  _ “Vanya.” _

She canted her hips up, meeting his movements, not allowing him to think of her as timid, little Vanya in that moment. She was someone else, and so was he, and they had to accept this. 

He didn’t seem to mind, tangling his hands into her hair, gripping just tightly enough that she wouldn’t be able to look away from her. Despite being rough, he kept murmuring her name like it was a prayer on his lips, like she was something precious and he couldn’t believe he finally had her. 

“You love me?” Vanya asked again, but this time they both knew who she was. 

“Yes,” he confirmed, slamming inside of her. “Yes, I love you.”

“I love you too.”

He groaned, tugging on her hair and kissing her. She was so close after having already been worked up before, and she pleaded for him to touch her again.

Obliging, he untangled a hand from her hair and snuck it under her skirt, commanding her to say his name as he did. She was able to for just a few moments, but then she couldn’t say anything else because she was clenching around him. He spilled into the condom, not pulling away for a few moments, just letting her stay wrapped up in him.

When he did, she whimpered. 

He blinked away and came back to her after disposing the condom, wordlessly wiping down the sweat on her body with a washcloth and handing her a glass of water. 

“You’re an assassin,” she noted, not sure what else to say but curious. 

He flicked a brow up, “Yes.”

“How long have you worked for them?”

“As I said before, two years.”

“Where were you before that?”

“The apocalypse,” Five’s voice held no irony, just strain. 

“What does that mean?”

“It  _ means.”  _ Realizing his voice had gotten harsh, he closed his eyes and breathed in and out a few beats before speaking again, “When I jumped forward into the future, I didn’t just land in the future. I landed at the end of the world. For years, I survived on whatever food I could find, trying all I could do to get home.”

“Why did you take so long?”

He opened his eyes and narrowed them at her. “You don’t think I didn’t do everything in my power to get back to you guys?”

She set her chin stubbornly, “It’s not like you particularly enjoyed us anyways.”

He sighed, “I was a little kid, and I was arrogant. I had to get away from Reginald, and I had to prove to you that-“

She raised her brows skyward as he trailed off, but he didn’t finish his train of thought. 

“You joined the Commission to get home, then,” Vanya said finally. 

“Yes.”

“And you still intend to go home?”

“Of course. Jesus, Vanya. Of course I’m trying to get back to you guys. It’s all I think about.”

Vanya tucked her legs to her chest, setting her chin on her knees. “Are you going to go home now?”

His eyes filled with remorse, and she had her answer before he spoke. “I  _ can’t,  _ Vanya. Not until I know it’ll be safe for you guys if I leave the Commission.” 

“You would stay here, even after this?”

“Vanya, I couldn’t possibly have-“

She roughly shoved on the clothes, wishing more than anything she had thought to bring something else along, feeling embarrassment and self-pity as she tugged on the not-quite-Academy-uniform. 

“Vanya, don’t-“

“You don’t get to tell me what to do here,” Vanya said, eyes pricking with errant tears. She wiped them away roughly. “You don’t get to tell me how to react to you leaving me again.”

“I’m not _leaving_ you,” Five insisted. “I’ll come back.”

“Come back  _ now,”  _ she pleaded. “Come home with me and let us be happy. I just want to be… Please just come home.” 

“I can’t,” Five said again. 

“I won’t wait for you again,” she threatened. 

“I wouldn’t expect you to.” His voice, though it sounded angered at the sentiment, was, more than anything, just resigned. 

“You know,” Vanya bit out before she left him behind in the room. “It would have been easier for me if you had just been dead.” 

* * *

It is her father’s funeral. He lands and looks around, but it is not the man she left that night. It is the boy who had left her. When his eyes land on her, she walks away. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
